Facebook brags about its ability to swing election results

Facebook’s marketing department has a web page set up to document success stories. But nestled somewhere between the pages for Panera Bread and Cheetos are pages for politicians like Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and former Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.

On each page, Facebook’s business team breaks down some metrics about how these political campaigns leveraged the platform to boost donations and turnout on election day. On Johnson’s page, Facebook boasts of a 6.8-point bump in the candidate’s favorability numbers among moderate voters.

But it is wording on Sen. Toomey’s “success story” that has struck a troubling chord. After noting that Toomey was facing a tough re-election in 2016, Facebook touted it’s ability to “significantly shift voter intent and increase favorability,” and that the campaign’s “made-for-Facebook creative strategy was an essential component to Senator Pat Toomey’s re-election, as the senator won by less than 100,000 votes (of nearly 6 million votes cast).”

Users are being asked to trust that Facebook’s algorithm—that supposedly impartial and coldly calculating nerve system powering huge corners of the platform—doesn’t start punishing one candidate’s efforts to organize on social media because his or her opponent is paying more.

After Facebook was accused of not doing enough to quash the spread of dangerous misinformation, the company’s defense was that the platform couldn’t possibly have swayed enough of their almost 200 million US users on Election Day. Its own business team begs to differ.

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